Passarola

Passarola, 1709

Brazilian Jesuit priest, linguist and mathematician, Bartolomeu Lourenço de Gusmão might have demonstrated to King João V of Portugal in 1709 that a device heavier than air could fly. Supposedly he floated a paper balloon construction indoors by means of a small fire in a clay crucible. There is only slim support for the notion that he successfully flew a bird-like 'balloon' some 60 or 70 years prior to the Montgolfier brothers of France however. It is also suggested that Gusmão's papers with substantiating evidence were destroyed during the Inquisition. Various forms of the Passarola (portuguese for flying ship) have appeared in print over the years. It's the stuff of patriotic legend.

The image above is from the 2-page MIT Institute Archives and Special Collections: Balloon Prints from the Vail Collection.

• Gusmão in the Catholic Encylopedia
• Translated Gusmão site.
• Portugal Air Museum site.

The Featherbook

Dioniosio Minaggio worked as a gardner to the Governor of Milan. During his tenure he made Il Bestiarrio Barocco in which 156 pictures were crafted entirely from bird feathers and skin. It was completed in 1618 and is housed today in the Blacker-Wood Library of Biology's Rare Book Collection at McGill University in Montreal.

Thumb page views (high resolution images are available) -

Birds I, Birds II, Birds III, Birds IV, The Hunters, The Comedians, The Musicians, The Tradesmen

• Avian Taxidermy in Europe from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance in J. Ornithol. 144, (459-478) 2003.
• Eurasian Jay

Addit: I finally found the information page. Either McGill has some funny linking happening or I wasn't paying close enough attention wandering around their sites.

Rare Books of the Japanese Diet Library

• The original untranslated homepage (translation)
• Original page of thumb views from which the above images were selected (translation) -- click on thumbs to go to each gallery (google translator home - copy gallery URL if you want it in english) [high resolution images are available]
  
• World rare book sample thumbs page translation.
• Europe rare book sample thumb page translation.
• Japan rare book sample thumb pages one and two translations.
• Very interesting 'item index' page translation - this may be all images on the site, but I'm just not certain (repeated as 'title index' translation - probably a little easier to follow)

Architectura Navalis Mercatoria

Frederik Chapman from Göteborg Sweden was partly educated in England and came to be regarded as one of the greatest shipbuilders and naval architects of all time. He approached design scientifically (going so far as to have legends and measurements in 3 languages) in contrast to the empirical/discussion methods of boating construction beforehand. One of his great works, Architectura Navalis Mercatoria, was published in Sweden in 1768 and contains a large number of diagrams from which the above were selected.

All the book illustrations (to my knowledge) are available at the Swedish subsite ChapmanNet. There is no english available that I could find. I somehow think there's a bit/lot more around on the parent site.

Emblemata

The Author's Meditation upon sight of his Picture
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What I Was, is passed by;
What I Am, away doth flie;
What I Shal Bee none do see;
Yet, in that, my Beauties bee.
George Wither 1635*

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Frontpiece* George Wither 1635

*A collection of Emblemes, Ancient and Moderne, Quickened with metricall illustrations, both Morall and divine: And Disposed into lotteries, that instruction, and good counsell, may bee furthered by an honest and pleasant recreation. George Wither 1635 in 4 volumes.

Emblem books were a popular form of moral publication in 15th and 16th century Europe. The idea was that you would meditate upon the pictures (typically woodcuts) with varying possible allegorical interpretations, and then read the adjacent text to fully understand the meaning. Thus, a sort of dual form of communication was used by the author to impart religious or secular ethics. The original emblem book, Emblematum liber was written by an Italian, Andrea Alciato in 1531, but this style of book was most popular in Belgium, Holland and Germany.

George Wither, puritan, satirist and poet of modest renown, was imprisoned a number of times for his blunt libels against the reigning powers. He was ulimately employed by a publisher to contribute emblematic verse to extant book plates by Crispin van Passe, but emblem books never grew to be as popular in Britain.

Pennsylvania State University have a number of scanned emblem books online as part of The English Emblem Book Project. There is some minor background commentary, but it's mostly about the research project.

• Giornale Nuovo entry about Iconologia
• A website devoted to Alciato's Emblemata [damn! which I just found] with 2 great thumb pages of emblem plates.
• Wither wiki

Astronomické České

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Manuscript Title: Textus varii
Date: 14th or 15th century
Text Script: Latin
Repository: Královská kanonie premonstrátů na Strahově, Praha
Website: Demo Versions of Complete Documents - Czech Manuscriptorium Memoria Project

My best search efforts failed to turn up much more by way of information, although I'm copying in the Latin/Czech notations from this manuscript as a comment. Fully half of the 150-odd page manuscript are illustrations in a similar vein to those above. I saved these images in the supposedly poor quality mode to avoid an imprinted watermark, but I don't think there was much loss of quality. Each of the 8 or so 'demo' manuscripts open in a modified window allowing for zoom and multiple page previews. Please educate me if anyone knows anything about Textus varii. Of course 'various texts' doesn't quite have the same ring of authenticity now does it?